Dynasties Are Actually Good And Cool To Root For
Kathryn Riley. Getty Images.Over the past 12 hours of so I've been seeing and hearing a lot of "I'm not even going to watch this Super Bowl". Now part of that is probably because most people I see and hear from are in the Philly area. We're still sour about losing last year's Super Bowl to the Chiefs, and somehow the 49ers have leap frogged the entire NFC East to become our most hated rival. So as far as rooting interest goes in Philly for this Super Bowl, it's like trying to choose who you'd want to win a fight between Hitler and Stalin.
And I get it. People are sick of the Chiefs winning all the time. Somewhere along the line, we became obsessed with this idea of parity in sports. We became enamored with this idea that any team can win on any given Sunday. Maybe it's because we're all still just a bunch of little kids who actually believe when our parents told us that we can grow up to be anything we want to be. When the reality of the situation is that you can't. Some people are just always going to be better than you at everything, and there's not shit you can do about it.
So if you just grow up for a moment and actually think about it rationally…dynasties are fucking awesome. There's something special about witnessing greatness. There's something special about watching a team or an athlete who everybody fears is inevitably going to win, end up doing the damn thing and continuing to win no matter what gets thrown in their way. The line between viewing that team/athlete as either a hero or villain is incredibly thin. I guess it's all personal preference and perspective at that point. But the fact of the matter is that every great story needs a hero, and every great story needs a villain. No matter what way you view them, dynasties are essential to sports.
The idea of parity is nice. It makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside because it makes you feel like your team always has a chance. It's a wonderful idea in theory. But in reality, every championship would lose so much significance if it were truly as random as any team being able to win any year. If it was so easy that anyone could do it, then what's the point?
Having to face an inevitable team like the Chiefs makes the Super Bowl so much more intriguing. It immediately makes it a heavyweight battle that will go down in history. Either as another year of the Chiefs adding to their legacy and putting themselves in the same level of immortality as dynasties that have come before them, or as a year where the beast was slayed. You don't get any of that if we had the parity that everybody wishes we actually had in sports.
Moral of the story is that you're a child if you grow sick and tired of watching greatness prevail year after year.
Sidenote: I'll never understand Eagles fans who still hold resentment towards Andy Reid. I know he never got the job finished here in Philly, but we're all die hard Eagles fans right now because of the teams he brought so close. You went into every Eagles season thinking we had a chance because of Andy Reid. The guy earned the chance to finally get his hands on all these Lombardis.